Sorry for the garbled version of this message. I'll try it again - Brian DeVore,
LSP.
NEW SUSTAINABILITY MONITORING GUIDE AVAILABLE FROM LSP
The Land Stewardship Project (LSP) has published a guide for monitoring the
sustainability of a farm.
"Monitoring Sustainable Agriculture with Conventional Financial Data," by Dick
Levins, is the first in a series based on the work of the Biological, Social and
Financial Monitoring Team. For the past three years, LSP and its partners on the
Monitoring Team have been experimenting with various ways farmers can make their
own observations and draw conclusions about their own progress toward
sustainability.
Monitoring sustainability using conventional financial indicators can be
difficult. Farmers normally think of using income and expense figures to measure
progress toward the goals of earning profits, says Levins, a Monitoring Team
member and a University of Minnesota agricultural economist. Like any producer,
sustainable farmers are concerned about feeding their families and paying bills.
But they also want to protect the land, improve their quality of life and
enhance the communities they live in. To be sustainable, farm progress must be
defined as movement toward a set of goals that include, but are not limited to,
profitability, he says.
In this 30-page publication, Levins presents four indicators to evaluate the
sustainability of farming operations. Using farm records or tax reports, farmers
can transfer numbers to work sheets provided in the book, and thus evaluate
their sustainability.
To order a copy of "Monitoring Sustainable Agriculture with Conventional
Financial Data," send $7 (that price includes postage; Minnesota residents add
6.5 percent sales tax) to: LSP, 2200 4th St., White Bear Lake, MN 55110. There
is a 10 percent discount for LSP members and bulk orders of 20 or more copies.
For more information about bulk orders, call LSP at (612) 653-0618.